Bonita Norris is no stranger to a challenge. At the age of 22 she became the youngest British woman to summit Mount Everest, a record that she held for two years. Alongside the planet’s tallest mountain, Bonita’s collection of expeditions and climbs also includes Manaslu and Lhotse, both of which sit well about the eight thousand metre mark, as well as a trip to the geographic north pole.
As the inspirational speaker at 2024’s Transcity Rail Midlands, Bonita spoke to attendees about her journey from her sofa, to the top of the world.
Bonita’s long road to Everest began two years previously, as she made the decision to attend a lecture about the mountains. This lecture, led to Bonita’s goal becoming clear: “one day I am going to climb Everest.” Whilst she had never climbed a mountain before she made that decision, she trained and honed her skills despite some naysayers:
“Limiting beliefs about who I was and where I came from pushed it to the back of my mind and there were a lot of jokes from other climbers at the beginning.”
As part of her training for Everest, Bonita took on another mammoth climb in itself: Manaslu. As she took on the next (rather large) step of her journey, she told delegates of another lesson, which is that you can achieve “success by smallness.” Integral to this goal, however, was her team. The importance of the support that her team provided by not giving up on her pushed her, as she agreed to go on the expedition to Everest only six months later.
The next step on the road was to go and do it. Achieve her goal. Climb the highest mountain on the planet. Whilst climbing Mount Everest might seem like a physical test, Bonita spoke about how the biggest bump in her road was actually finding the £50,000 that it took to get on the trip. As she didn’t come from the same background as many other climbers, Bonita wasn’t able to just find the money – she would have to find a sponsor. Being turned away by company after company, naturally she did think that it might be easier to simply give up.
That was, however, until she woke up one morning with a week to find the money or she would be removed from the expedition. Bonita told attendees that the idea did cross her mind to simply roll over, go back to sleep, and give up on her dream of Everest. Rather than do that however, ‘passion trumped logic’ and she headed for another training session, and on the way, she decided that she would phone a radio station and tell her story.
After only a short interview on the radio, Bonita received a phone call from a company that had previously turned down her sponsorship request, offering the full amount if she mentioned their name. Now the dream was back on, Bonita had overcome her doubts. As she put it:
“The biggest mountain is the one in your mind.”
Whilst not everybody is aiming on climbing Mount Everest, the importance of Bonita’s journey can be appreciated by anybody, anywhere. Bonita’s story is one of having the right team around you and not giving up, even when quitting seems like the only sane thing to do.
